Bio Inc.

Hey guys!

Look what I found this Friday evening!
I was looking for a Plague Inc-like game, and ta-da!
This is Bio Inc. Your goal in this game is to kill off a single person using a disease which you control.
The funny thing is that you can give this person a name of your choice!
So if you really dislike someone, this is your chance to kill that person in your imagination/in game-form.


Developer: DryGin Studios 
Operating Systems: iOS, Android
Release Date: July 2014
Website: http://playbioinc.com/
Game Objective: Kill your human target by weakening and destroying his/her organ systems.

First of all, the trailer is.. Quite interesting. The graphics shown on the trailer tablet are also the kind of graphics you can find in the game, so at least it's not deceiving you.
The stethoscope the doctor is wearing seems to be a bit uncomfortable though..

So here's the icon for Plague Inc and Bio Inc.
Plague Inc went with red, with a DNA background. Bio Inc. went with a cooler (as in colder) blue, along with a background shot of neurons, I guess. At least there's no mistaking the two.

Opening screen

This is the opening screen. Again, blue. Simple logo, but it works.
What's kind of tragic, however, is the symbol in the name. The Rod of Hermes or Caduceus (Hermes = Greek God of travel/trade. Mercury/Mercurius is the Roman counterpart) is a symbol of trade, not medicine.
Blame the Americans for confusing people.
The correct symbol of medicine is the Asklepios' Rod, a staff with a single snake and no wings.
(Mind you, I do like the Caduceus, simply because Mercury is one of my favourite gods, and because the Caduceus is more symmetric than the Rod of Asklepios is.)

You're going down, B! (as in B*tch, not the celeb)

 So yeah. There are about 12 different stages, or scenarios. As you unlock more scenarios, things will get a lot harder for you. Within every stage, there are also 3 difficulty levels, ranging from 'Walk-in-the-park' to 'OMG!'

Once you've set your parameters, you're brought to this screen. The organ systems which you can plague with ailments to destroy your patient are shown on the left. The yellow shield on the right represents the patient's immune system.
'Bio points' are comparable to Plague Inc's 'DNA points', and 'Recovery' equals 'Cure' in Plague Inc.
Bio points can be used to upgrade your disease, to predispose your patient to certain illnesses, and to slow the recovery time.

Bio points are earned through tapping bacteria and viruses which appear in the different organ systems.

Bio Points!

If an organ system on the left lights up, it means that there's a pathogen present in the patient's body. This pathogen will be shown on the body diagram on the right. Tapping this pathogen in time will reward you with bio points (1-3 or so).
The immune system, like in real life situations, must be weakened in order for many pathogens to wreck havoc on the human body. In Bio Inc., this is the way to earn loads of bio points.

Here's where you can spend your points. The 'Diseases' tab shows you each symptom which you can evolve for your disease. 'Risk Factors' are traits you can evolve for your target/patient in order to make him/her more vulnerable to certain diseases of an organ system. Obesity, for example, predisposes a patient to cardiovascular disease.

Certain traits will hack away at only one organ system's health, whereas others may target multiple organ systems. If one organ system fails (as is indicated by a little lightning bolt, as is shown in the above screenie next to the Nervous System), the other organ systems will start to fail as well.
But beware! Like most people, your target will visit a doctor for his/her health complaints. This is where 'Recovery' starts. Your target's doctors will start to work on curing the target. When Recovery reaches 100%, it's game over for you.

Every organ system in this patient/target failed. Yeah. He/She is dead, as is shown by the flatline in the left upper corner. Now compare the skeleton in the above image to the skeleton a few screenies above (the one with the pathogen). As an organ system starts to deteriorate, the game will show this as flaws in the organ systems. That's kind of cool.

Here you go! I won!

Pros:

• Easy to understand.
• Challenging.
• Decent, evolving graphics.
• Evolving soundtracks (it starts out really calm, and once your patient/target is rushed to the emergency room, you get the really cool action-movie-like themes).
• You can kill someone you dislike in an imaginary scenario. Ahem.

Cons:

• Ads - I don't mind the bars. But seriously? 7 second ad videos are absolutely unnecessary.
• Wtf is that Caduceus symbol doing there?!
• Black screen / Screen freezes (every once in a while)
• If you're into action-packed games, this is not the game for you.

Conclusion:
If you like strategic challenges, murdering imaginary people, and medicine, you might want to give this a try.


Disclaimer: The screenshots were made by me, obviously, but the graphics/designs etc belong to their respective owners.
The bloody syringe phone wallpaper is ©DarkShadowfax and ©Purexia/©Ainyria, though.